


The Ink Demonth 2020

by AvaBlook



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Birthday Cake, Body Horror, Fast Food, Gen, Headaches & Migraines, McDonald's, Memory Loss, Musical Instruments, Trapped In Elevator, Workplace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:48:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 18,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25653151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaBlook/pseuds/AvaBlook
Summary: Prompt fills for The Ink Demonth 2020, hosted by halfusek. Full prompt list ishere.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	1. Cake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Henry's birthday. Some of his coworkers decide to celebrate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never done one of these daily prompt events before, but I decided to give it a go this year! These will probably be pretty short and unpolished, but my goal is to do _something_ for every day

After two years working at Joey Drew Studios, Henry barely noticed the sound of people walking through the hall behind him anymore. Given the placement of his desk, such noises were an inevitability, and he couldn’t afford to be distracted from whatever he was currently drawing any time someone needed to get by.

He had a deadline to meet, after all. There was always another deadline.

So he learned to tune out whatever was making noise behind him and focus on his drawing instead. This had its advantages, of course, but it also meant that on the odd occasion that someone  _ did _ actually come by to talk to him, he was usually taken by surprise. 

So Henry didn’t really notice the clatter of footsteps that came up behind him while he was busy inking the lines on a picture of Bendy, or notice that it stopped just behind his desk. He didn’t have any idea that anyone was behind him until they all yelled out in unison.

“Happy Birthday!” 

Henry startled, pulling his hand back from the paper just in time to avoid drawing a huge line across the paper when his hand jerked in surprise. He set his pen down and turned around to see a small crowd of some other Studio workers. Sammy from the music department stood near the back of the crowd with his arms crossed. Wally, the janitor, seemed to have come along mostly as an excuse to take a break, and looked almost as confused as Henry himself. The new animator they’d hired a couple months back, the one whose name Henry kept forgetting, stood front and center, holding a chocolate-frosted cake. Joey was standing just behind him, smiling.

“What’s all this about?” Henry asked. 

“It’s your birthday, of course!” Joey said. “I figured a little celebration was in order for our star animator!”

“Wait,  _ my  _ birthday?” Henry asked. He turned to look at the calendar pinned to the wall next to his desk, the one he used to keep track of the ever-closer deadlines. He’d barely been keeping track of the days for the past few weeks, but sure enough, today was his birthday.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those guys that doesn’t like celebrations!” Wally said. 

“No, no, it’s not that,” Henry said. “I guess I just… lost track of time?”

The new animator gave Henry a worried look, but none of the others seemed too concerned. Joey stepped forward and slung his arm around Henry’s shoulders, pulling him away from his desk.

“Exactly why you need a little break!” Joey said. “I know you work hard, but you’ve got to work happy, too!”

Joey ushered the little group into the employee break room down the hall, where the new animator set the cake down on the table. Before, Henry had assumed it was just frosted with chocolate, but from this angle, he could see that the top of the cake was mostly frosted in white icing, with details drawn on in melted chocolate. 

Henry looked down at the cake, and Bendy’s face smiled back up at him.

“It’s great, isn’t it?” Joey said. “I got a bakery downtown to do it. Looks just like him!”

“Yeah, it does,” Henry admitted. The lines of melted chocolate were crisp and smooth, on par with the inked lines of Henry’s own drawings. It was almost a shame to cut into the cake and ruin the design on top.

Joey didn’t hesitate, though, plunging a knife through the cake and cracking the chocolate design on top without even blinking. He handed Henry a plate with a slice of the cake, a corner of Bendy’s smile still visible on top of it. The cake inside was chocolate, it turned out, and no doubt the reason Joey had been able to convince Sammy to go along with this disruption of the workday.

“Don’t just stand there looking at it; dig in!” Joey said, handing over a fork as well. 

So Henry did. He had to admit, it was a good cake. Not that he expected anything else, if Joey had been the one to get it. Whatever other flaws the man might have had, he had good taste. 


	2. Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex has forgotten most things, but he still has a few memories

Things Alex remembered:

  * His name was Alex. There may have been more to it, once, but most people had called him Alex, and that was all he remembered.
  * He had probably been a musician. He couldn’t quite remember which instrument had been his, but the Music Department felt familiar in a way that most of the Studio didn’t.
  * He liked the taste of salt. He had been teased before for salting his food too vigorously, but he couldn’t remember who had done the teasing. He also couldn’t remember what, exactly, salt tasted like.
  * A thick blanket wrapped tight around him as he shivered with the cold and the wind howled outside.
  * A small balcony, with a tomato plant and a small rosebush growing side-by-side in plain terra cotta pots.
  * The first time he’d run to the Studio bathroom and thrown up ink instead of bile.
  * The first few dizzying moments after being sacrificed, when his mind had been unceremoniously scattered to the puddles, and everything that made him _Alex_ began drifting away, drowned out under wails and screams and the broken, lost memories of everyone that had been sacrificed before him. The desperate way he had clung to the few memories he had left, once he realized what was happening, repeating them over and over in his mind until he’d found his way out of the puddles and the dizzying buzz of the others had quieted.



It wasn’t much to go on. Not nearly enough to give Alex a full image of the person he had been before he was this inky mess. But it was more than most people had. Some people said that the Prophet remembered almost everything—his name, his job, his family—but that was a rarity. Everyone knew that the Searchers were lucky to have a single memory of their own. All the other Lost Ones, as the Prophet called them, had at least a few things they remembered, scattered fleeting memories like Alex had, but most had lost their names. 

Names were valuable. In the puddles, where people’s minds and thoughts blurred together, everyone was  _ me _ , and everything was  _ mine _ . It was impossible to distinguish yourself from someone else in there unless you had a name.

Beyond his name, Alex had at least enough bits and pieces to speculate about who he had been, before.

Maybe he had played the piano, or the cello. Maybe he had even been a singer. Maybe that balcony he remembered had been his, and he was a gardener in his free time. Maybe it was a friend’s, and that would mean that he’d  _ had _ friends, not that he could remember anything more about them.

There was no way of knowing, not really. It wasn’t like it mattered either way. If those plants had been his, they were long dead by now. If he’d had friends before this, it wasn’t like he’d ever see them again.

But when the rest of his world was ink and death and terror, it was nice to at least have the memory of a better time.


	3. Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sammy tries to get some work done. Emphasis on _tries_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't feel like editing today so this may be a bit sloppier than usual

_ Drip, drip, drip. _

Sammy closed his eyes and groaned, suppressing the urge to bang his head against his desk. The rough animation had just come in from upstairs, and he needed to be working on the music to accompany it. He needed something bouncy and lighthearted, something that would match the pace of Bendy’s footsteps, but all he could hear was the ink dripping from the pipe outside his door. 

_ Drip, drip. _

If it was at least following some kind of pattern, he might have been able to work around it. He’d gotten used to writing music with a ticking clock or metronome in the background, he could handle the dripping from the pipe if it happened at regular intervals, but apparently even  _ that  _ was too much to ask for. The ink leaked out of the pipe in streams, slow drips, and heavy drops that almost put Sammy in mind of a rainstorm—all in the span of an hour.

_ Drip drip drip drip drip. _

There it went, picking up the pace again. He could already hear Wally shuffling down the hallway towards his office to mop up the quickly-growing puddle. The splash of Wally dunking his mop into his bucket broke whatever vague hope of concentration Sammy might have had, and he turned to watch the janitor at work instead. 

Wally pulled a strip of tape out of one of his many overall pockets and layered it onto the pipe outside Sammy’s door. The dripping of ink from the pipe finally stopped, though Sammy knew the relief was only temporary. After all, that pipe was almost more tape than actual pipe at this point. Within a couple of days, the ink would leak through again. 

In the meantime, though, maybe he stood a chance at actually getting some music written. Sammy hummed a few bars under his breath, scratching them down on a sheet of music paper. Something cheery, something upbeat and hopeful—he could still manage that much, at least.

From down the hall came a loud clang, followed by a splash, followed by several voices cussing. Sammy’s door slammed open behind him, crashing into the wall.

“Heya, Sammy! Another pipe burst, I’ll just flip the switch and be outta here!” Wally said, as cheerfully oblivious as ever.

Maybe Jack had the right idea, retreating down to the sewers. At least down there it was quiet enough to  _ actually  _ get some work done.


	4. Denial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joey Drew Studios does _not_ need Henry Stein, thank you very much!

As far as Joey Drew was concerned, Henry’s quitting hadn’t really affected the Studio’s operations much at all! Sure, they’d needed to hire a few more animators, but they ran a tight ship—they would have needed to hire a replacement for anyone who quit, not just Henry! 

And, okay, morale was down, but that was just because of the animation delays—delays which weren’t even that bad! Just the new animators getting up to speed, that was all. Give them a few weeks, and they’d be making cartoons faster than Henry ever had! 

The new style they brought to their drawings was just what they needed to keep the cartoons fresh, too! Hell, without Henry to nitpick over a model sheet, maybe they could introduce some new characters! Audiences were getting used to Boris, so he wasn’t much of a villain anymore; Joey could whip up something new and menacing, put Bendy in some  _ real  _ trouble in the next short! People  _ liked _ conflict, liked seeing the hero need to put up a fight, after all. 

Henry quitting was  _ not _ going to be a major setback, Joey was sure of that. He was just an animator, not a core component of the company like Joey was! They didn’t need his animating, they didn’t need his input on new characters, and they didn’t need his listening ear in the break room encouraging employees to slack off. 

Good riddance, Joey said! Without Henry to be a stick in the mud, they could finally begin making some big changes around here! They’d innovate, and grow, and in a couple years Joey Drew Studios would be the biggest thing on the screen and Henry would be begging for his job back.

Joey certainly didn’t  _ miss _ Henry’s presence. When Norman had suggested  _ that _ , Joey had laughed him right out of the room. He was far too busy running a successful company to miss  _ anyone _ , let alone Henry.

No, things were going to be _just_ _fine_ without Henry.


	5. Bendy Royale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Studio crew have an inky free-for-all!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I know Henry wouldn’t have been working there after the Ink Machine was installed, but the prompt for today is Bendy Royale, were you _really_ expecting canon compliance?

According to Norman, the whole thing started when a pipe burst outside the recording room while the band was performing and Wally came by to clean up. Sammy had taken exception to the amount of noise the janitor was making, slammed open the door, and chucked a bottle of ink at Wally. 

“How on earth does that escalate to…  _ this _ ?” Henry asked, gesturing out the break room door to the ink-spattered hallway beyond. One of the band members ran past, cackling and splattered with ink, as Wally Franks chased behind them.

“I’m gonna kill ya!” Wally yelled out, brandishing a mop bucket with inky water sloshing over the sides.

“Beats me,” Norman said. “I had the sense to leave before they really got going.”

Henry sighed. When Norman warned him about the chaos going on downstairs, he’d managed to pack up the cels he’d been working on, but there was no telling what else would be destroyed by the ink being splashed around so casually. Just when it seemed like they’d be able to make a deadline without crunch, too.

“Joey’s not gonna like this,” Henry said. 

“I wouldn’t sound so sure if I was you,” Norman said. 

“He can’t possibly—” Henry started to say, but Norman shushed him, and Henry reluctantly listened to the noise in the halls outside. 

A set of footsteps ran past, a bottle of ink shattered against the wall, and somewhere in the distance he could hear Susie Campbell yelling, but amidst the noise, Henry was able to make out Joey Drew’s own distinctive, booming laugh. Was he really okay with this, maybe even  _ enjoying _ it?

“I won’t be outdone in my own Studio!” Joey announced, and then came a gushing sound that lasted for several seconds. Ink began flowing through the doorway to the break room and down the stairs.

“Huh. He really doesn’t mind,” Henry said. “Guess you were right, Norman.”

“I’m always right, Henry,” Norman said, tipping back his chair so casually that Henry almost believed that it was just because he wanted to, not to avoid the slowly-growing puddle of ink on the floor. “Now, are you gonna put an end to this mess, or what?”

“Me? Why not you?” Henry asked. 

“And ruin my good shoes?” Norman asked. “You’re an animator, surely you can handle a little ink.”

“Fine,” Henry said, making his way up the stairs. The heart of the battle seemed to have moved over near the screening room, so at least he wasn’t in the thick of things right out of the gate. “But you owe me one!”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Norman said. 

Henry sighed and made his way out into the ink-splattered hallways, hoping he could put a stop to this ink fight before it got out of hand.

A crate with Bendy’s face printed on the side smashed into the wall just in front of Henry, splitting into pieces. Thankfully, all it seemed to have in it were a few pieces of paper, but that was as good a sign as any that things were  _ thoroughly  _ out of hand now. Henry didn’t even want to think about how much further this would go if he waited for Joey to put a stop to it.

“That’s enough!” Henry yelled. “Time’s up, put your ink down!”

“Aw, man,” Wally Franks complained, dropping his mop bucket. “And just when I was about to win!”


	6. Instrument

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sammy finds an old banjo

It had been a while since Sammy had visited the Music Department. He preferred to spend his time in the lower levels of the Studio, leading the lost ones and working towards salvation. The Music Department held memories, and that was dangerous. 

Most of what he remembered was bad: ceaseless noise, annoying coworkers, the stress of trying to meet impossible deadlines. He could handle that. It was the good memories that were hard to deal with. The scattered few moments of the band all playing together, Susie’s pitch-perfect voice cutting through the air, the music that he had worked so hard to perfect coming to life before him… if he let himself, he could get lost in reminiscing, and he had a job to do here. 

There had been whispers in the pipes and the puddles about a newcomer to the Studio, someone wandering the halls who wasn’t made up of ink yet, just coated in it. It was some kind of sign, it  _ had  _ to be, and Sammy would be the one to interpret his Lord’s will and do as He asked, which meant finding this interloper.

In the meantime, he maintained the altars in the area, placing new Bendy cutouts and lighting the candles that had gone out. He refused to let himself be distracted.

Except.

Except that the Music Department hadn’t been torn apart as much as the lower levels had been. There was still some semblance of what the Studio had once been up here: sheet music on the easels, desks cleared for work, film loaded into the projector. The recording room still had the band’s instruments all laid out for the day’s recording, for crying out loud.

Sammy recognized the temptation that the band room posed and refused to enter, but as he painted the walls, he couldn’t help but notice a stray banjo, just sitting out in the hallway. Had he left it there, once? Or had it been someone else? He could almost imagine some indistinct figure, practicing in their free time and setting the banjo down just for a moment, never to return.

He had his mission, he had his duties, he had his  _ Lord _ . He was working towards his  _ salvation _ , and he could not afford distractions in the meantime.

But… the banjo had always been a favorite of his. Some part of him would not let him just ignore the instrument and go about his business. Music was something he’d been able to turn to when he had nothing else; it was woven into his very soul. Sammy sang the praises of the Ink Demon often enough, but how long had it been since he had actually played an instrument?

Despite his better judgement, Sammy found himself picking the banjo up, holding it in a position he hadn’t taken in years but that still felt like second nature. He brought his hand up to it, intending to strum just a few notes, just enough to remind himself of what a banjo was supposed to sound like. His ink hands met the tightly-wound strings of the banjo, and for a moment it seemed like everything would work out.

Then the banjo strings cut through the surface tension of his hands and snapped back to place, sending a spray of ink from Sammy’s fingers against the floor.

It didn’t hurt. There were no nerves left in Sammy’s body, and it had been ages since he’d felt anything other than cold. Still, it was something of an unpleasant shock to have something so familiar betray you so utterly.

He made another attempt with the same results, then a third, and was forced to stop when the ink of his hand kept running, the surface refusing to solidify again. Stupid. He should have expected this, should have known better than to even try. All that he could hope for in this Hell was to please his Lord, to win back his own body by proving his devotion. There was nothing else that could save him, not even music.

Sammy set the banjo back down and returned his focus to the shrines in the area. He  _ would _ do as he was called to do, to please the Demon and escape the inky prison of his current body. He wasn’t about to let anything as trivial as his favorite instrument distract him from that.


	7. Chilling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas fixes some pipes

Thomas sighed, pulling on his wrench to tighten the screw again. A thin stream of ink ran from the seam between two pipes, trickling into a puddle on the floor. No matter how tightly he screwed the pipes together, they always leaked sooner or later.

If he didn’t know the things he did, he might’ve written it off as the pipes being cheap, the plumbing system not being built for ink instead of water. He doubted it was anything as innocent as that, though. The ink wasn’t pushed through the pipes by any regular pump, but by the Ink Machine. Knowing Drew’s vision for the Machine, Thomas couldn’t write off the idea that the pipes leaked by design, that the Studio was regularly stained by the ink because that was exactly what Drew wanted to happen.

But there was nothing he could do about it except wait for a leak and then tighten the pipes’ seams.

He reached up towards another screw holding the junction between the pipes in place, and his hand passed through the stream of ink leaking down. Even through his thick work gloves, the ink was cold, like it’d just been pumped out of an iced-over pond in the dead of winter. 

Logically, the ink shouldn’t have been cold. There was no system installed to cool the ink or the pipes, so it ought to have been the same temperature as the rest of the room. 

Thomas had seen what the Machine could do. Hell, he’d helped build the thing. The rules of logic meant  _ nothing  _ in the face of a device like that. The ink being cold was the least of its influence.

It wasn’t good to dwell on it. The Machine was built, and Thomas couldn’t change that, no matter how much he wanted to. All he could do now was to minimize the damage it did, and try to get out before Drew pushed his luck even farther.

Thomas finished tightening the final screw, and the leak of ink from the pipe trickled to a stop. 

There was the sound of creaking metal from a couple halls over, and then a splash of liquid against the floor. Another leak, another pipe to fix, another puddle of ink seeping into the wood of the Studio floor. How much of the building had been soaked in the stuff by now? Franks did his best, but there was no getting every drop of ink out of the rough wooden floorboards. How much of that Machine’s ink was surrounding him  _ right now ? _

Thomas hurried towards the new leak, determined not to think about it for too long. Just the idea of being surrounded by the unseen ink was enough to send a shiver up his spine.


	8. Soup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry sees the new can design for Briar Label Bacon Soup

“Joey… what is this?” Henry asked, staring at the wooden cases piled just inside the doorway to the Studio. 

“It’s soup!” Joey beamed. “Briar Label Bacon Soup, to be exact!”

“Right…” Henry said. He’d seen the stuff in the grocery store before, but he’d never eaten it himself. “And why are there seven cases of it here?”

“Why don’t you take a look at one of the cans?” Joey suggested, grinning wide enough that it almost looked painful.

Henry sighed, but obliged. He popped the lid off the nearest crate and pulled out a can of the soup. At first glance, there was nothing too remarkable about the can, but then he turned his hand a little and froze. Printed on the can’s label was a picture of Bendy, and the caption “Just the way the Little Devil likes it!”

“It’s our first brand partnership!” Joey said. “It’s a bit of a stretch, I know, but it’s just the first of many! Soon enough, Bendy will be on lunchboxes, and playing cards, and maybe even a wristwatch or something!”

Henry chuckled. Joey’s enthusiasm was infectious, and Henry could already feel a new excitement for the future of Bendy that the other man had just instilled in him. He looked down at the soup can in his hand again, and smiled down at the demon smiling back up at him.

“Yeah, Joey,” Henry said. “That sounds great.”


	9. Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice Angel uncovers a mirror

At the heart of Alice Angel’s domain was a room that hardly seemed to belong in the Studio. It had the same wood-paneled walls, and a few ink stains, but unlike the rotted and abandoned building that surrounded it, this room was carefully taken care of. Buckets were placed beneath every leaking pipe to save the minimally-stained rug placed in the middle of the floor, and all traces of that horrid grinning demon had been removed. Instead, the walls were covered with posters and merchandise of Alice herself. A record player in the corner spun a record of Alice’s music at all times. There was a soft sofa, and a set of shelves for her memorabilia, and most importantly, a makeup desk with a sheet over the mirror that she’d dragged in from the voice actors’ backstage, the centerpiece of the room.

For all that Sammy had gone on about  _ his _ sanctuary, he hadn’t put half as much work into it as Alice had put into hers. 

When she was in her sanctuary, Alice could almost forget about the hellish nightmare that the rest of the Studio had become. It was far enough into her territory that she couldn’t hear the moans of the searchers or the snarls of the Butcher Gang, and the Ink Demon’s tainted ink had never dared to coat her sanctuary’s walls. Here, she didn’t have to worry about being dragged back to the puddles, and she wasn’t haunted by the corpses of all those she had torn through in her quest for perfection. There were just her songs, and her posters, and her plush toys, and she could pretend that everything was just fine.

As long as she kept the mirror covered, that was.

She couldn’t bring herself to smash it. One day, she’d get back to what she’d had before, she’d be  _ perfect _ , and when that happened she would mourn the loss of the mirror. In the meantime, she still needed a way to monitor her progress, to see how close to perfection she’d come.

Alice gently pulled the sheet from the mirror and looked at herself.

It was always a shock, seeing her reflection. Every time she pulled back the sheet, she was expecting to see the face that adorned the rest of the room, round and beautiful, not the misshapen mess that the Ink Demon had left her with. Once she got past that, though, she could judge for herself what the latest round of treatments had done.

Her cheek had closed up again, the outline of the Ink Demon’s hand across her face barely noticeable now. Her eye was still stubbornly round, though, with no sign of a pie-cut, and her mouth… well, it had been worse before she’d started, but that wasn’t saying much. 

It was progress, though! She’d come so far from when the Demon had first touched her, and the untouched half of her face looked almost perfect now. It was just the area where the Demon’s ink had made direct contact that still needed fixing.

She  _ would  _ be perfect again. She was Alice Angel, after all, and she could fix  _ anything  _ the little devil broke, even herself! She just needed more time, more ink, more hearts. Just a little more, and she’d be back to herself!

In the meantime, she covered the mirror again. 


	10. Mechanic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That damned elevator gets stuck

On her very first day working for Joey Drew Studios, Allison had been warned about the elevator.

“This thing’s slow to respond, when it does at all,” the receptionist said, hitting the button to call the elevator several times before the tether began pulling the elevator car up to their level.

Allison had written it off, then, choosing not to let anything damper her excitement for her new job. The elevator was just a bit old, nothing to seriously worry about, and it wasn’t like she was going to take the stairs wearing her new heels if she could help it.

For the first few months, everything seemed to be working fine. The elevator was slow to respond, but it always came eventually, and stopped at the right floor in the end. 

But, as they say, all good things must come to an end, and Allison now found herself stuck in an elevator stalled between the second and third basement levels. 

“Hello? Is anyone there?” Allison called out. She couldn’t see anyone in range of the elevator through the door grates, which wasn’t a great sign. She’d come in earlier than usual to do some extra vocal exercises before the day’s recording, so barely anyone was in the building at all, let alone near the elevator. 

Maybe she could try pulling the grate in front of the elevator open and make her way out? It would be a bit of a jump to make it to the floor above her, though, and a sharp drop to the floor below. Why couldn’t the elevator have gotten stuck just a little sooner or a little later?

The elevator shuddered, knocking against the walls of the elevator shaft as the lift mechanism struggled to lift the stuck elevator.

“Help!” Allison called out. “Someone?”

The elevator suddenly dropped a few inches, and Allison screamed. It hadn’t fallen enough to hurt her, but she needed to get out of here before it did. With the floor above now even further out of her reach, she knelt down and set her sights on the grate covering the entry to the floor below. She grabbed a few of the bars and pulled, hoping that the door would crumple open. No such luck. Whoever had last used the elevator for this floor had apparently latched the thing securely shut.

Normally, that was the ideal result, but right now it was a terrible nuisance, because the latch was several inches out of reach. 

While she was trying to figure out what to do next, Allison heard the door to the stairwell slam shut.

“Hello? Is someone there?” she asked. “Help, please!”

The man who walked into view in front of the elevator was someone she’d only seen once or twice before: a tall, muscular man wearing a work uniform similar to Wally’s. She almost didn’t recognize him at all, not yet covered in ink from the day’s work fixing pipes. Sammy had said he was some kind of mechanic, right? He certainly worked on the pipes enough to be one.

“Always said that thing was a deathtrap,” the mechanic said. “It get stuck on ya?”

“Yes, but it keeps—” here the elevator dropped again, almost a foot this time, though Allison managed to hold in her scream this time.

“Alright, let’s get you out of there,” the mechanic said, walking up to the elevator and pulling the door for the lower floor open. There was enough room now that Allison would have no problems slipping out of the elevator car, but there was still a several-foot drop down to the floor below.

“I gotcha,” the mechanic said, holding out his arms to break her fall. Allison bit her lip and pushed off the elevator floor, falling forward and into the mechanic’s arms. He stumbled back from the elevator, pulling her clear as the elevator car shook again and dropped out of sight.

“I am  _ never  _ getting in that thing again,” Allison said. “Thank you so much for your help, Mr.—”

“Connor. Thomas Connor,” the mechanic said. 

“Well, thank you, Mr. Connor,” Allison said. 

“Eh, don’t mention it,” Mr. Connor said. “I’m just glad I got here in time. Drew really ought to shut this thing down for good before it hurts someone, but knowing him, he’ll just have the cable tightened back up and keep running the damn thing until it’s beyond repair.”

Allison shuddered at the thought. Joey Drew had seemed so nice the few times she’d seen him, always lively and enthusiastic. Would he really keep running a faulty elevator he knew would hurt someone?

Well, Mr. Connor seemed to think so, and he’d worked here longer than Allison had, so she’d have to take his word for it.

And from now on, she was taking the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this how a 1940s elevator would fail? I don't know and I don't care. I'm here for drama!  
> Today's prompt was 100% supposed to be for Thomas but that just made me want to write anything else so here's an Allison-centric fic with a Thomas meet cute


	11. Bargaining

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry puts in his two weeks' notice

“Henry, you can’t be serious…”

“I meant what I said. I’m quitting, Joey.”

Joey chuckled halfheartedly. “That’s quite a strong move for a negotiation tactic. Well, you  _ are  _ overdue for a raise… I might be able to scrape up 10%, if that works?”

“It’s not about the money, Joey,” Henry sighed. “I can’t keep working like this.”

“You  _ know  _ our deadlines, Henry.”

“I know,” Henry said.

“It’s the industry!” Joey said. “If we go any slower, the other studios will eat us alive!”

“I  _ know _ ,” Henry said. “But I can’t do this anymore, Joey. I’m here ten, twelve hours a day. Linda’s already asleep by the time I get home most days. It’s like this job is all that’s left in my life anymore, and I can’t handle that.”

“So I’ll hire another animator!” Joey said. “You can split your workload, and  _ stay _ .”

“Joey…” Henry sighed. “I’ve been asking for more animators for months. You always said we don’t have it in the budget.”

“We can cut some corners elsewhere, maybe take out a loan. We can find the money, Henry.”

“You couldn’t the first time I asked,” Henry said. “Or the third, or the dozenth. Only when I’m leaving are you taking me seriously.”

“Henry, this Studio needs you,” Joey pleaded. “We can’t have cartoons without an animator!”

“I’ll serve out the rest of my two weeks, but after that I’m gone,” Henry said. He turned to walk out of Joey’s office. 

“I _know_ you care about Bendy,” Joey called out. “Are you just going to abandon him? Throw away this whole dream?”

Henry turned to look back at Joey. A soft smile crossed his face.

“I  _ do  _ care about Bendy,” he said, and Joey silently rejoiced.

“But Bendy’s a character,” Henry continued. “He’s not going to know the difference once I’m gone. And I can’t spend any more of my life miserable for his sake.”

Henry turned back around and left the room. The office door clicked shut behind him, and Joey slumped down into his seat. 

There had to be  _ something  _ that would convince Henry to stay! Joey just had to figure out what that was, and how to get his hands on it, before Henry’s two weeks were up. Everyone could be persuaded, after all. Everyone could be bought. He just needed to find the right price.


	12. Ring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry washes up

The “water” that came out of the sink in the safehouse bathroom was tinged dark with ink. Henry wasn’t sure what else he’d been expecting. Everything in the Studio seemed to be drowning in the ink, and the plumbing was no different. He was just thankful that it wasn’t straight ink. 

The sink faucet didn’t offer enough water to clean him off entirely, but his pants and shoes were already a lost cause at this point. No, Henry was most concerned about his hands, and the sink did just fine at rinsing those off.

The flow of water from the tap was warmer than the ink, and as it chased the caked-on ink off of his skin, Henry could actually  _ feel _ his hands for the first time in… well, time was hard to judge down here, but it had been a little while. Under the flow of the water, pure inky blackness ran and faded to ink-stained skin and the glint of gold.

Good. He’d been worried that his wedding ring had slipped off of his hand at some point, since he hadn’t been able to feel it there with his hands numb, but it was still snugly in place.

He’d had a photo of Linda in his wallet, but it had been soaked through with ink when he’d fallen through the floor in front of the exit, leaving his wedding ring as his only physical reminder of his wife that he had in this nightmare. He rubbed his thumb against the time-worn metal, absentmindedly clearing the last traces of ink off of the golden band. 

He really wanted to find a safer way to carry it, but there weren’t many options. If he put it in his pocket, he’d risk it falling out if he had another big fall. He hadn’t seen anything he could use to hang it around his neck, yet, but even if he did, he’d be risking the tie coming undone or the tether snapping.

No, best to keep it on his hand for now. Even if it wound up getting covered in ink again, it had stayed on just fine so far, and there was no reason to fix something that wasn’t broken. And even if he couldn’t feel it, it was nice to know it was there, just like it had been for the past thirty-two years.

It was easy to lose hope, in a place like this. It would be far simpler to just sit down and despair, or give up on escape and spend the rest of his days in the safehouse. The ring was a reminder that there was someone out there waiting on him, someone he needed to get back to.

With a sigh, Henry shut the water off, letting his hands drip dry above the sink. He’d take Boris up on his offer of a cot to sleep on, try to get some rest. When he woke up, he’d get back to work trying to find a way out of here, a way back to Linda. 


	13. Heated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soup tastes better warm

Boris was lucky that no one else had claimed the stove yet when he found it. Sure, it was broken, but once he had the rooms around it sealed up and secure, it only took a few days to get it working again. Once he had the outer plating off, the wiring inside felt… familiar, in that strange way that a lot of things he knew he’d never seen before did.  _ Boris  _ didn’t understand the wiring of the stove, but whoever he used to be had, and that was enough to get it working again.

The Studio was cold, see. The ink was cold, and everything it touched was cold, and everything made of it was cold, always. Even Boris couldn’t shake the chill of the ink that lay at the very core of him, where his bones would be if he wasn’t a toon.

But the stove, now that it worked, was warm. Hot, even. It wasn’t safe to leave it on for very long, but the radiant heat from just standing near it was enough to fight back the chill of the ink. And, of course, it could also heat other things up, which meant he no longer had to swig his bacon soup down cold or try in vain to heat it over a candle without catching the wrapper on fire. 

When the soup was properly heated, the bacon fat that tended to congeal in chunks melted into the broth, making it a lot tastier and less slimy. It wasn’t quite as satisfying as some of the meals he remembered from the cartoons, but it was definitely a step up from eating the soup cold.

There weren’t a lot of things in the Studio that were good, or comforting, or safe. Danger lurked around every corner, and Boris was risking his life every time he ventured out of his safehouse for supplies.

But with a nice bowl of warm soup in front of him, it was easier to forget that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any of y'all watch Infinity Train? Cause hoo boy the first half of season 3 has broken me. Today and the next few days might not be quite up to par cause I am _reeling_


	14. Arch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry and co. escape the Studio and make a pit stop on the way to Henry's house. The McDonald's employee they meet is very, very confused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was just a silly little joke idea and now it's my longest prompt fill this month? What the fuck?  
> Thanks to Lordlyhour for suggesting McDonald's as a way to fill the Arch prompt!

By nine at night, the dinner rush had tapered off, and by ten-thirty, the parking lot was totally empty of customers. Most nights, this simply meant waiting out the rest of the shift, killing time until the store closed and everyone had to pitch in with closing up.

Tonight, however, Steve caught sight of an old van rolling into the parking lot at 10:37. He suppressed the urge to groan and stopped leaning on the counter to stand up straight as the van parked and two figures got out of the car. 

It was pretty late at night to be having dinner; were they on a roadtrip, or just trying to get a late-night snack? 

As the two walked a little closer to the window, close enough that the light from inside reached them, all of Steve’s musings about why they were out so late evaporated in a second, because both of them were absolutely drenched in a dark liquid that Steve hoped to God was paint or ink or something. 

The man was the one to approach the window, with the woman hanging behind him. Despite his gut screaming at him, Steve smiled and launched into his usual spiel.

“Hi, welcome to McDonald’s, home of the golden arches, what can I get for ya?” Steve asked. 

The man in front of the counter looked startled, looking at Steve with poorly-concealed shock. He was old, Steve could see now; maybe this was his first time at a McDonald’s?

“Give me a second,” the man said, reaching into his pocket to pull out a wallet that was also soaked through with dark liquid. In the light from the kitchen behind him, Steve could see that it was pitch black. It was a relief to know that the two people outside the restaurant right now weren’t drenched in blood, but it raised a whole new set of questions, namely  _ what _ and  _ how _ .

The man counted through the bills in his wallet, then counted something out on his fingers, then turned to look at the woman standing behind him. 

“Hey, Allison, does Tom… have Boris’s appetite?” he asked. The woman, presumably Allison, nodded, and the man turned back to the window, counting on his fingers again.

“Okay, uh, we’ll take, let’s see, eleven? Oh shoot, Norman can’t—ten hamburgers,” the man said.

“Ten hamburgers,” Steve repeated, unable to tell if this was some kind of weird prank.

“Yep, ten. Okay now, let me think… six sides of fries? Or... “ he turned back to counting through his money again, and Steve hesitantly started a ticket with the man’s order for ten hamburgers.

“Henry, what’s a ‘triple-thick shake’?” Allison asked from where she was standing, several feet back from the window, apparently entranced by the menu. As he looked at her, Steve swore her face looked  _ wrong _ , her eyes too big for the rest of her, but he figured that was just the lighting playing tricks on him.

The man, Henry, took a breath like he was going to try to explain, and then just sighed. 

“Two vanilla shakes, two chocolate, and one strawberry,” he said.

“And the fries?” Steve asked.

“Eight sides of fries,” Henry said, apparently making up his mind and aiming higher than his previous suggestion of six. Geez, how many people was this guy ordering food for?

“Will that be all?” Steve asked. 

Henry looked Steve dead in the eyes, and Steve was struck by just how exhausted the older man looked, like he’d been awake for a week straight and hating every minute of it.

“I’m gonna need a coffee,” Henry said, and Steve dutifully added that to the ticket. 

“Alright, then. Your total is three dollars and fifty cents,” Steve said, and the man pulled a few bills loose from his wallet and handed them over. At this point, Steve wasn’t surprised by the ink staining the edges of the bills, or the black smudges the other man’s hands left on them. He tucked the bills into the register and handed over the change, then sent the ticket back to the kitchen for Leo to cook up.

After giving their order, Henry and Allison retreated back out of the light from the restaurant to wait for it, and started talking to each other in low tones, which only piqued Steve’s interest in them. He lingered near the window, pretending to be busy wiping the counter down as he watched them out of the corner of his eye. Henry had been blocking Steve’s view of Allison before, whether by accident or by design, but now he could at least make out what looked like a  _ sword  _ hanging off of her hip, and some glowing doohickey hung from Henry’s belt. Just who  _ were  _ there people?!

Leo got the food out as fast as usual, and in just a few minutes a number of bags and drink cups were piled at the takeaway window. Henry and Allison stepped forward to collect them, though they obviously weren’t able to carry all of it. The two of them exchanged a glance, and then took a long, hard look at Steve. He started to put his hands up, ready to explain for the hundredth time that company policy meant he couldn’t help them carry their food to their car, but that wasn’t what they had in mind.

“Tom, we need a little help!” Allison called out, and one of the back doors to the van slammed open. The figure (presumably named Tom) that came rushing out was a blur at first, impossible to make out in the dark parking lot, but came into focus as he got closer to the window.

Oh,  _ hell _ no! Steve had to be dreaming. There was no other explanation as to how a six-foot tall figure he could only describe as a  _ cartoon dog  _ came to be standing in front of his window. 

Tom stood in front of the window, glaring at Steve for a long moment during which Steve was pretty sure the temperature dropped a solid ten degrees, and then reached forward and picked up the rest of the bags that Henry and Allison hadn’t been able to carry. Oh, what the fuck, the cartoon dog also had a  _ robot arm? _

Allison, apparently oblivious to Steve’s distress, gave the man a cheery grin. Henry offered a sympathetic look, but in the end, followed the other two back to the van without offering any kind of explanation. 

Steve leaned out the window to gawk as they walked back. Through the open door of the van, be could make out a bright, flickering light reflecting off of some kind of wet black surface, but then the door was pulled shut and the van drove out of the parking lot.

“Leo!” Steve called. “Leo, my God, tell me you saw those people!”

“Calm down, man,” Leo said, coming out of the kitchen to join Steve at the window. “We’ve seen crowds before. Sure it’s late, but it’s not worth the excitement.”

“Nah, you don’t get it,” Steve said. “They had this dog—”

“I’ve seen dogs before,” Leo said. “Again, not worth the excitement.”

“No, but  _ this _ dog was up on its back legs like a fuckin’ cartoon, and it had this robot arm—”

“Sounds like you oughta stop workin’ closin’ shifts, if you’re dozin’ off at the window and havin’ these kinda dreams,” Leo said. 

“I wasn’t dreaming!” Steve insisted, turning to look out at the parking lot, hoping for some kind of proof of what he’d just seen. It was empty, though. The only sign that there had ever been a cartoon dog, or a lady with a sword, or an old man drenched in ink was the ticket from the absurdly large order they’d placed. 

“No way I dreamt all that,” Steve said, already starting to doubt himself.


	15. Poisoning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry gets ink poisoning as he travels through the Studio

At first, Henry had regarded the ink as a mere annoyance. Sure, it was everywhere, and it made moving around hard, and his clothes were almost certainly never going to be their original color again, but it was  _ ink. _ Whether it came out of Joey’s fancy machine or not, Henry had been working around ink for years, and it was as much of a presence in his life as water, or air.

He’d waded through the flooded hallways and stuck his hands through the leaks from the pipes without much hesitation. The ink wasn’t  _ comfortable _ , but with a demon wearing the misshapen face of a cartoon out for his blood, comfort was the least of his worries. 

He’d written off the chill in his hands and feet as a side effect of being wet in a building with no heating, and then written off the tremors as a side effect of the chill. After all, ink was ink, and ink was harmless.

The first time he actually swallowed any of it was while he was sipping a can of bacon soup. Some ink had splattered the sides of the can at some point, and when Henry lifted the can to his mouth without looking, his lips brushed the still-wet ink. 

Henry had tasted ink before; he’d absentmindedly tucked wet pens into his mouth more times than he could count. This ink had the same bitter taste he remembered, but there was something more to it as well, a metallic tang that couldn’t be entirely attributed to the metal can, an aftertaste that made his mouth tingle almost like mint. 

He rotated the can to avoid accidentally ingesting the ink again, but that aftertaste didn’t leave his mouth, and the taste of it was in the back of his mind as he made his way further into the Music Department.

The Ink Demon had been an anomaly, and he’d only seen it for a second. He could convince himself that the monster hadn’t been made out of ink. The Searchers, not so much. They popped to life from puddles of ink that looked exactly the same as all the other ink in the Studio, and for the first time Henry felt a pang of alarm at the thought of what exactly the ink he’d been wading through  _ was _ , but he didn’t have much time to think about that was he was busy beheading the things with his ax.

When Sammy tied him to a pole to be sacrificed to the Demon, however, Henry had all the attention in the world to worry, and all the more reason. The self-proclaimed prophet didn’t act like the music director Henry had once known, or look like him, but his voice was exactly the same. The dripping, insane ink creature standing in front of him had once been his coworker, and Henry had no idea how he had become  _ this _ .

Well, he had his suspicions. He didn’t like them. After all, if the ink had done  _ that  _ to Sammy, there was nothing to keep it from doing the same to Henry.

Boris’s safehouse had, among other things, a tap with running water. Henry watched the flow of clear liquid from the tap for a long moment before plunging his hands into the water. If he could just wash the ink off before it had a chance to take hold of him...

It was no use. Henry scrubbed his hands together underneath the water, and plenty of black ink ran down the drain, but never enough to reveal skin underneath.

After twenty minutes, Henry reluctantly turned off the faucet and wiped his hands dry on his shirt. His hands left trails of black ink against the still-clean fabric. He could still taste the tang of ink at the back of his throat, and a nagging desire to taste it again. It would be easy to find more ink, the easiest thing to just let a little of it linger on his tongue, maybe swallow some. Just a little. He wasn’t quite desperate for it, not yet, but he was longing for it the way he’d long for a taste of Linda’s cooking after a long day of work. 

...It was already too late for him, wasn’t it?


	16. Vision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ink calls out to Sammy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished writing up a whole story for today only to realize it fit tomorrow much better, so this was a bit more rushed than usual

Sammy didn’t dream anymore. Creatures made of ink didn’t need to sleep, and no sleep meant no dreams. Simple, straightforward, easy. He knew it, he accepted it, and of all the things he’s lost since succumbing to the ink, dreams were the least of his concerns. 

It left him scrambling for a word to describe what he did see, though, and the best he’d been able to come up with so far was  _ visions _ . 

The visions only came sometimes, and only for a second or two, barely enough to be sure of what he was seeing. When he walked into one of the rooms he was familiar with, he’d see it bustling with people who were now lost to the ink. He’d look at the others who had managed to pull themselves together, and instead of seeing an ink-dripping hollow skull, he’d recognize a coworker. When he passed a mirror, he swore he saw his own,  _ real  _ face looking back at him.

It wasn’t really happening, he knew that much, but it wasn’t exactly a dream, either. That left Sammy wondering what exactly these visions were, and where they came from. Simple nostalgia, his brain playing tricks on him? He doubted it. Sammy had never been a sentimental man, and he didn’t have enough brain tissue left for it to misfire at random.

No, Sammy was sure that the visions had something to do with the voices that called out from the pipes. When the Studio was still running, the ink had called to him with promises of something better, and the visions were just the same, just stronger. He’d traveled down the path the ink had laid out for him, and now it was calling to him again, even louder this time. He couldn’t help but to follow, to do what was asked of him, especially when it promised such lovely salvation at the end of his journey.

The ink had trapped him in the cursed form he now inhabited, but it would return him to his own body if he could only prove himself, he was sure. Even Dante had to walk through Hell before he could reach heaven. This was just a test of his faith. If he did everything the ink demanded of him, surely it would reward his devotion and make those visions a reality.

Sammy refused to entertain any other possibility.


	17. Distractions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Norman tries to take his mind off of a headache

Norman’s head was throbbing. He’d had his fair share of headaches over the course of his life, a handful of migraines too, but this one absolutely took the cake. It wasn’t just his brain that was struck by pain, but his whole head, from the top of his neck to the top of his skull. 

He winced as he realized this, and tried to remember what might have brought such a bad headache on, but came up with nothing. All his memories seemed somewhat fuzzy and far away, vague impressions overshadowed by his current pain. He certainly couldn’t remember anything to explain his current situation.

Where was he, anyway? He didn’t hear the band playing, or Wally cleaning up, or workers chit-chatting on their break. In fact, as he watched the steady but silent drip of ink from a cracked pipe, Norman realized he couldn’t hear anything at all.

Noise was almost certainly being made somewhere, but for some reason Norman’s ears didn’t seem to be working right now. He’d heard about psychosomatic pain responses before; maybe this was his body’s way or dealing with his headache? Yeah, that sounded plausible…

Anyway, he could still see. If his hearing didn’t work, he’d just have to rely on his vision for now.

The room he was in was bright, almost blindingly so. He looked for a light source, but the rest of the room seemed equally bright. He tried to squint his eyes to block out some of the light, hoping that might ease his headache, but no dice. He couldn’t close his eyes if he tried. 

Well, that was worrying. It really made him wonder what had happened to leave him in such a state, but all that trying to remember brought him was another sharp stab of pain through his head.

Distraction. He needed a distraction, needed to think about something else, anything other than the pain. 

The room he was in was paneled with wood—the Studio? He was at work, then. He ought to get to work; headache or not, Joey wouldn’t be happy to see Norman slacking. Work was projectors: fixing them, keeping them running. He could do that much, at least. Norman knew projectors as well as he knew his own body. Even if his head was aching and his memories were a bit fuzzy, he could still fix a projector. Could probably do it in his sleep at this point.

He looked around the still too-bright room until his gaze landed on a projector, and he made his way over to it. His body felt too heavy, now that he tried to move it, like someone had strapped weights to his ankles and his arms. Still, he found his way to the projector, which turned out to have a twisted line of film jamming up the gears. 

Norman pulled the film free with a gentle tug and straightened it out on the table. Ugh, damn thing was smudged with ink. Well, that wasn’t his job. He only got paid to deal with the projectors, not maintaining the film. He threaded the film back into the projector until it caught and started running normally again. Mission accomplished.

Now, what was he doing? He had been… he’d been...

The projectionist’s head was throbbing. There was no noise to overwhelm him, but the room was so bright, and he couldn’t shut his eyes to block out the light. A distraction, he needed a distraction. Something to focus on to forget about the pain spiking in his head, the extra weight pulling on his limbs. 

He turned his head and caught sight of a projector. Right, he was at the Studio. Time to get to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Initially I wrote this for yesterday's prompt, Vision, but then I actually looked at the calendar and realized it fit today much better


	18. Teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edgar's mouth is sewn shut. Grant doesn't take it well

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Body horror warning!

Edgar hadn’t been around...wherever _this_ was...all that long, but he already knew he didn’t like it. Everyone here was taller than him, which he was used to, but they were _so much taller_ he could barely see their faces. Not that he had much chance to look anyone in the face anyway. He was ignored, for the most part, shut away in empty rooms for long stretches of time, and when people came by, all they ever talked about was how _wrong_ Edgar was.

They had a point. Edgar was supposed to have more legs than this, and no arms, and one of his eyes looked all funny when he saw it in a mirror that one time. His body being weird like this had to be some kinda side effect of being in the too-big, too-dark building he was in now. It wasn’t like he _wanted_ to look like this, but it wasn’t like he could tell anyone that, since he wasn’t able to talk here, either.

If Barley and Charley were here, they’d make the other people listen. They’d bust down the door and all three of them would be able to run wild through whatever weird building this was before making yet another narrow escape. But they weren’t here, and Edgar wasn’t strong enough to break through the door on his own. He’d tried.

Just because Barley and Charley weren’t here didn’t mean he was alone, though. There was nobody else in the room that they kept locking him in, but there was somebody in his _head_ , a secret voice only Edgar could hear. The voice knew exactly where they were, even if he had a hard time explaining it to Edgar, and he recognized everyone that ever opened the door. 

He never liked them.

Any time someone got too close to Edgar, the voice would take control of his body, make him lash out and snap at them with his fangs, scare them away. It had worked pretty well, until this morning, when a whole bunch of people came in at once. They’d picked Edgar up, carried him over to a weird-looking table, strapped him down, and sewed his mouth up tight. 

_I’m sorry…_ the voice said once Edgar was locked back in his room. _I was trying to protect us…_

Without really wanting to, Edgar found himself curling up in the corner of the room, his upper pair of arms grabbing at the top of his head and covering his face while his lower pair of arms hugged his chest. The voice had only ever really used Edgar’s body to bite at people before; this was nicer.

At least, it would have been nicer, if the voice in his head wasn’t so upset. Edgar’s body rocked back and forth without his say so, his hands pulled against his head, and the voice in his head was talking in tiny, fragmented phrases now, not even full sentences.

_I wanted… I thought I could… and now… and it hurts! Sorry, sorry… hurts you too… I just wanted… just thought maybe… maybe someone…_

Edgar had never really been afraid of the voice in his head before. He kept quiet, mostly, and just tried to stick up for him, like Barley and Charley did. This was different, though. Now he wasn’t making any sense at all, and he was using Edgar’s body but not to keep them safe, and Edgar didn’t like this at all. He wanted the voice to go back to being quiet, wanted his body to be his again, but when he tried to stand up, tried to pull his hands down from his head, he couldn’t. If anything, his hands gripped tighter, until the top of his head started to hurt.

He’d never argued with the voice in his head before, but now that they wanted different things, it was clear that the voice was much stronger than Edgar was. All the spider could do was watch helplessly as the voice panicked and used Edgar’s body to work out his energy.

 _And, and now I’m—stuck! Trapped! Wrong, this is wrong, it’s all wrong,_ I’m _wrong!_

A muffled noise tore its way out of Edgar’s throat. It was probably supposed to be a scream, but with his mouth sewn shut like it was, it wound up sounding more like he was choking on something. 

Something wet and cold tracked its way down Edgar’s face. It wasn’t a tear; it started at his forehead, not the bottom of his eye, and for a moment Edgar wondered if he was sitting under a leaky pipe. Then another trail of liquid rushed down, dripping down onto the gloves of his lower pair of hands, and Edgar could see it was ink. 

His head was starting to feel squishy and slick with ink under his hands, and Edgar really wished that the voice would let go. His scalp was really starting to hurt, but his hands dug in even deeper as the voice in his head continued moaning things only Edgar could hear.

Finally, with an all-consuming burst of agony, the voice pulled Edgar’s hands from his head, pulling his head apart in the process.

Edgar whimpered in pain, and the voice seemed to hesitate for the first time since this whole episode had started. His upper arms slowly lowered away from his head, and one wiped away the ink gushing from his new wound.

_I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I just… I need..._

There was another sharp pain on top of Edgar’s head, different from when it had been pulled open. He could feel his skin tearing, but differently, like something was trying to claw its way out of Edgar instead of clawing its way in. What started as a few dozen pinpicks of pressure against the edges of his wound grew to a stabbing pain so intense Edgar collapsed to the floor as something fought its way out of his flesh.

It only took a minute, or at least, Edgar thought it did. It was hard to tell time here, but it didn’t feel like it had been too long when the pain finally subsided. Edgar reached a curious hand up to feel the wound at his head. No, not quite a wound anymore. A mouth. The small, hard bits that had grown from his head and now pressed against his gloved hands were _teeth_. 

_I really need to scream..._

Edgar’s new mouth opened, and he screamed with a voice that wasn’t his.


	19. Entertainment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boris and Norman play cards

When they’d first escaped the Studio, Boris had been half-convinced it was a dream. He had only ever known the wooden hallways of the Studio, couldn’t even really think too long about what might be outside the building without feeling awfully strange about it, and he’d sure never thought he’d get outta there himself. Miracle worker that he was, Henry had managed it, though, and gotten not just Boris but a few other folks from the Studio out for good.

The first few days were exhilarating. The car ride to Henry’s house, eating food that wasn’t bacon soup, being able to just walk around without having to worry about someone trying to kill him—all of it was incredible. And there was so much more to the world outside the Studio than he’d thought! There were colors other than sepia and black out here, and the sky was so  _ big _ , and had he mentioned the whole people-that-weren’t-trying-to-kill-him thing?

The fact remained, however, that Boris was a cartoon wolf, and the world at large was not used to seeing cartoon wolves. Allison could go out and about with Henry, provided she wore a hat, and Susie had managed it once or twice with some doing, but there wasn’t anything to be done to camouflage Boris’s snout, or the Projectionist’s head, or Sammy’s… well, _everything_.

Henry did what he could for them, but there wasn’t really much to be  _ done  _ about this. Anyway, as far as Boris was concerned, being cooped up in Henry’s house was leagues better than being able to roam the whole Studio. 

It did mean that they had to find ways to keep themselves entertained inside the house while Henry was at work. Sammy had tuned up Henry’s old piano and started composing again. Allison had been fascinated by the plants growing in Henry’s yard, and most days she was out there gardening with a sunhat to hide her horns from view of the neighbors. Tom had taken up tinkering with an old broken-down car in Henry’s garage, hoping to get it running again. Susie… well, Boris hadn’t seen much of her, but she seemed to be steadily reading her way through every book in Henry’s house.

That left Boris and Norman. Norman didn’t seem to have the presence of mind to pick up a new hobby, and his projector-based vision made reading hard, so he and Boris had started to pass the time playing cards together. Boris hadn’t taken the cards from his safe house, but Henry had a deck lying around, and after a few games, Norman seemed to remember the rules for several card games. He was better than Henry, and usually beat Boris, but that was fine. The wolf had never really cared so much about winning as about having a good time.

It wasn’t like they could have much of a conversation, what with neither of them actually being able to talk. Henry had been trying to study sign language and pass it on to the rest of them, but in the meantime, it wasn’t like you needed to be chatting to enjoy a game of cards. Besides, if you thought about it, a round of cards was pretty much a conversation, in a way. There was a back-and-forth to it, at least.

Okay, so maybe calling it a conversation was a bit of a stretch, but it was at least a fun way to stay busy. 


	20. Paralyzed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Alice" crashes the elevator

Henry should have seen something like this coming, honestly. “Alice” was clearly unhinged, and trusting her had been foolish at best. And now, as she sent the elevator plummeting down its shaft, it was looking like that might be a fatal mistake.

The elevator rocked to the side, caught against the edge of the floor, and slammed to a stop so abruptly it sent Henry airborne. He caught a brief glance of Boris, hands still held over his eyes, slamming into the ceiling.

And then Henry blacked out.

* * *

Henry awoke in fits and starts, his vision fading in and out as he became aware of… a soft pressure on his shoulders. A hand, a pair of hands, gently trying to rouse him. He appreciated the sentiment, but it wasn’t doing him much good. He couldn’t even get his eyes to focus. He probably had a concussion from the crash.

Slowly, he was able to make out a figure in front of him, one he could recognize: Boris. Henry wanted to reach out and pat Boris’s shoulder, or at least greet him with a “hey buddy”, but his body refused to respond. His head was still swimming, and it was a fight to keep his eyes open, let alone to move more than that.

He could hear music now, someone was humming nearby. He recognized the song, although he couldn’t remember the name of it. And then, in the hallway behind Boris, the source of the music came into view: “Alice” herself.

This was bad. She was trying to kill Henry and kidnap Boris, wanted to rip the wolf apart and use him to fix herself. They needed to get away from here, needed to run… but Henry’s body still wasn’t responding. It was like he was frozen to the spot. He needed to stand up, but the most he managed was a twitch. There was no telling where the pipe that Henry had been carrying had gone, but he was in no state to use it himself, and Boris didn’t seem to have the ability to defend himself with a weapon.

Boris needed to run, then. The toon had been “Alice’s” primary target, and he seemed to be in much better shape than Henry was right now, so he might stand a chance at getting away. He’d certainly been able to run fast back in her lair.

Henry opened his mouth to tell the toon to run, but all that escaped him was a low moan. Boris began shaking him with more intensity, apparently unaware that “Alice” was getting closer and closer behind him. 

“No,” Henry managed to choke out, but he was ultimately helpless to do anything but watch as Alice strode forward, grabbed Boris by the back of his overalls, and ran back down the hallway with breathtaking speed.

“No…” Henry moaned out, but there was no one left to hear him. His vision faded to black again, and Henry slumped against the remains of the crashed elevator, motionless.


	21. Money

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s no more room in the budget, but Joey won't accept that

It was late on a Friday afternoon when the door to Joey Drew’s office swung open without so much as a knock. Joey, who had been taking advantage of a small gap between meetings to look over a revised plan for Bendyland, looked up to see his accountant standing in the doorway.

“Grant! I don’t remember seeing you on my itinerary for today,” Joey said. 

Grant sighed. “I tried to make an appointment, but your secretary said you were booked up for the next few weeks.”

“Well, I am!” Joey said. “Running a company this big takes a lot of time and hard work, you know!”

“I can imagine,” Grant said, stepping fully into Joey’s office and closing the door behind him. “This is rather urgent, though. I figured you could spare a few minutes.”

“Well, then, let’s cut to the chase!”

“The Studio is out of money,” Grant said. 

Joey sat motionless at his desk, his smile seemingly frozen into his face.

“My hearing must be going,” Joey said. “For a second there it sounded like you said that we were out of money!”

“I did,” Grant said. “We are.”

“Well, seeing as your whole job is to make sure the finances are sorted out, that sounds like a problem for  _ you _ to be dealing with instead of bothering me about it,” Joey said.

“That is  _ not— _ do you even  _ know _ what an accountant  _ does? _ ” Grant asked. He almost immediately waved his hand, dismissing the question. “Forget it, not important—the point is, I’ve done everything I can, Mr. Drew, but our spending outpaces our income by so much that there’s no way to cover it.”

“Can’t we collect some payments in advance, until some of our bigger projects start bringing in revenue?” Joey asked.

“We’ve been doing that for months,” Grant said. “There’s only so many times that a theater will pay an advance fee for a cartoon that they don’t get until weeks after it was promised to arrive. Trust me, there is  _ nowhere _ we can get this money from; I’ve looked into every possible option.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Joey asked, his voice icy cold.

“We need to cut spending, wherever possible,” Grant said. “Put a hold on Bendyland, probably lay some people off. We need to turn the cartoons around faster, too; we can’t afford any more missed deadlines.”

Joey’s office was almost silent for a moment, the only sound coming from the ticking Bendy clock hung on the wall.

“Grant, this is a company founded on one simple belief: that dreams come true,” Joey said. “That’s what we do here: we take dreams and we make them into reality. Do you really think I’m about to let something as trivial as a few scraps of green paper put a stop to that mission?”

“But—“

“Find the money, Grant. Or I’ll be finding myself a new accountant.”

“Y-you’d fire me?” Grant asked.

“Something like that,” Joey smirked.

The blood rushed out of Grant’s face, and he fumbled with the doorknob on his way out of the room. Good. In Joey’s experience, people were most likely to find a way to get the job done when they were terrified of the alternative.


	22. Voice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You don’t realize what you have until it’s gone.

Buddy had never been much of a talker. He wasn’t the best with words, with making what he wanted to communicate into something other people would understand. Still, his voice had always been there whenever he really needed to say something, even if the words he needed weren’t. Even when a bad cold gave him a sore throat, he could at least choke out a whisper.

Now the best he could manage were noises, the sorts of sounds you’d expect a wolf to make. Nothing even close to human speech. He’d tried talking again, just in case, each time hoping that maybe it had just been a fluke. Grunts and whines came out in place of words until Buddy stopped trying.

Boris didn’t see the problem with that; in the world of his cartoons, that was plenty, and he’d never needed to be able to say more. A few noises, paired with some gestures, and he could communicate any idea, in theory. 

Of course,  _ ‘there’s a demon in the basement and our boss is turning people into monsters’ _ had never come up in the cartoons.

Buddy knew that he needed to warn someone about what had happened. The workers that were still alive needed to get out before Joey poisoned them with the ink, or took their souls to try making cartoons like he’d done to Buddy. They needed to leave before the demon that was supposed to be Bendy got ahold of them.

But that was easier said than done. Heh,  _ said _ . If Buddy could  _ say  _ anything, this’d be an easy fix: take one of the tape recorders Joey had been pushing the employees to use, talk about everything that’d happened, and leave the tape on Dot’s desk. She’d seen the demon, she’d be the most likely to believe Buddy’s warning.

If she was still alive, that was.

Without a voice, though, Buddy had to find another way to warn her. His first thought was to draw everything out; his art skills still had a ways to go, but they were still the best method he had to communicate. Then he remembered what the ink in this studio  _ did  _ to the things people drew with it and quickly dismissed the idea. 

That left him with writing. Buddy had never really learned anything about writing; he’d picked up some tricks from Dot, just by knowing her, but he was nowhere near her talent level. He didn’t have any other options, though. He had to tell her what had happened, any way he could.

It wasn’t hard to find pens and paper, not when he knew where all the store rooms were. He snuck up from the basement in the middle of the night, and took as much as he could carry. Someone would notice the missing paper and ink, he knew that. He just didn’t care. Hell, when they couldn’t find the thief, maybe they’d even get the idea that something was wrong here.

Back in the hidden corners of the building’s basement, Buddy put pen to paper and began to write.

The ink may have taken his voice, but he wasn’t going to let it silence him.


	23. Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry is lost on Level P

In the thirty years Henry had been gone, Joey Drew had clearly gone insane. Sure, the talk of “sacrifices to the gods” and the pipes running through the Studio had been tip-offs, but the real confirmation was the state of the Studio’s lower levels. Seriously, what was “Level P” even supposed to  _ mean?  _ And  _ why _ was the floor absolutely swimming in those weird valve panels?

Henry rested his plunger on the floor and ran his hands through his hair, desperately trying to remember where the elevator was, or the stairs. All these basement levels were tangles of rooms and hallways placed without any apparent planning behind them, and it made his head swim trying to remember how he’d gotten to where he was now. Everything was wood and ink, with no real landmarks except the occasional bit of graffiti painted on the walls. 

He sighed, picking up his plunger again. He’d just have to pick a direction and keep walking until he found a way back to Level 9, or a dead end. It wasn’t like he could get any  _ more  _ lost, right?

As he trudged down yet another identical twisting hallway, he couldn’t help but wonder how anyone had been able to remember this floor plan well enough to work down here.

* * *

It only took Henry a few minutes to gather the power cores on this loop, most of that time spent spinning the little valve wheels. He’d been through this building so many times that the convoluted floor plan was more of an inconvenience than a serious hindrance by now. He knew where all the valve panels were, where all the Miracle Stations were, which routes through the floor were quickest and safest.

As he headed back to the elevator, Henry cast a glance at the message written on the wall. 

_ I don’t want to work here anymore _

_ That makes two of us _ , Henry thought. Way back on his first and second and maybe even dozenth runs through Joey’s twisted little story, Henry had felt sorry for whichever poor employee had written that. He had thought he would find a way out for himself, that he wasn’t trapped here like everyone else was.

Now he knew that wasn’t the case. He’d been through this ordeal hundreds of times, tried everything he could think of to escape, and was still stuck here, acting out the same script over and over. Now he envied whoever had written that message. They’d at least had some hope for a life that wasn’t just ink and misery. Henry had lost that hope the hundredth time that Joey had tossed him back into this hell without a sign of remorse. 


	24. Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Susie put her heart into her work. When that wasn't enough, Alice decided to put a few other people's hearts in as well

“Susie, do you want to be Alice again?”

At the time, Susie hadn’t hesitated. What sort of question was that, anyway? Voicing Alice Angel had been her proudest work, and she felt a connection to the little toon that she hadn’t felt before or since. _Of course_ she wanted to go back to being the voice of her most beloved character!

Really, she should have paid more attention to Joey’s wording. What he was offering her wasn’t a job or a role but an _identity_ ; she wouldn’t just be providing a voice for Alice anymore, she would _become_ her. At least, that was the idea. Susie didn’t understand all of what Joey said about gods and rituals, but like an idiot she trusted him anyway, and was willing to try what he was proposing if it meant she’d get to play Alice’s part again.

“This is only going to work if you can give it your all,” Joey said. “You need to throw your heart and soul into this without hesitation. Can you do that for me, Alice?”

And Susie had been so ecstatic at hearing that name directed at her again that she agreed without a second thought. 

Later, when she found herself at the center of a pentagram with a knife poised over her throat, she regretted it. This was all so overwhelming, and in this lighting Joey’s face was downright scary, and when the knife broke the skin of her throat, Susie flinched.

The first attempt was a disaster. She could hardly remember the days between the first ritual and the second; they were a blur of fragmented thoughts, oozing ink, and screaming. She was fairly certain she’d been the one screaming, but without being able to feel her throat, it was hard to know for sure.

When the time came for the second attempt, she had nothing left to lose. She had no body, no connection to reality, no life to go back to as Susie Campbell. The only option was to throw herself entirely into the role of another and become Alice Angel.

And so she did.

* * *

Alice stumbled through the halls half-blind, fleeing the Ink Demon behind her, ink dripping off of her and staining the floor. She was lucky she’d been close to her own little sanctuary, so she knew the halls and was able to outrun the demon despite the way the left side of her face was dissolving where his hand had brushed against her skin.

She slammed the heavy metal door shut behind her, sighing in relief as the tendrils of ink snaking across the walls grew fainter and disappeared altogether. 

The Ink Demon had the ability to outright melt down lesser attempts at toons, the twisted and malformed ink monsters that roamed the halls. Alice had seen it happen enough times to know that. But it was only supposed to be the _failed_ toons that he destroyed; a perfect angel like her should have been safe! 

Where had she gone wrong? How could she fix this?

Alice collapsed on the ground, leaning against the door as she wracked her fragmented memories for anything Joey had ever told her about the rituals and the ink that might offer a solution. So much of what he’d said to her had gone over her head even at the time he told her, but there was one thing she remembered.

Joey had said that she needed to put her heart into the ritual for it to work, and she _had_ . She was Alice Angel down to the very core of her, but that _still_ wasn’t enough to keep her from falling to pieces at the hands of the demon. Maybe… maybe she just needed more? 

Susie’s heart had been thoroughly consumed by the ritual that made her into Alice, but the failed sacrifices hadn’t been integrated so strongly. There were still other hearts out there in the Studio, just _waiting_ for someone to make use of them. It wasn’t like the shambling, vacant Butcher Gang would notice the absence.

It wasn’t like she had a choice. Alice had already lost so much since Susie had first been hired here. Her identity as Alice was the only thing she had to hold onto now. If hearts were what she needed to be an angel, then Alice would find as many hearts as it took to make herself perfect again.


	25. Sunshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after they escape from the Studio, Bendy wakes Henry up

After spending God-knows-how-long looping through the Studio, when Henry finally got back to his own house, he wanted to sleep for a week. Unfortunately for him, at a little past six in the morning on the day after escaping, a small body plopped onto his chest and a pair of gloved hands shook him awake. 

“Henry, wake up!” Bendy’s voice came out in a stage whisper, just barely quieter than his regular speaking voice. Henry’s eyes reluctantly opened to see Bendy’s face looking down at him. The devil looked absolutely distraught.

“Bendy?” Henry asked, groggily attempting to sit up despite the toon perched on his chest. Bendy, thankfully, got the hint and jumped off the bed, letting Henry push himself upright.

“What’s got you so worked up?” Henry asked.

“Henry, somethin’s wrong with the sky!” Bendy said.

“Wrong how?” Henry asked, already getting out of bed and reaching for the curtains of his bedroom window. He dreaded what he’d see: a rainstorm of ink, the yellow wooden paneling of the Studio, utter blankness like an empty sheet of paper? 

But when he pulled the curtains open, the scene that greeted him was entirely ordinary. The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon, lightening the sky from black to blue. Henry winced a little at the sudden light, but Bendy outright flinched away from the window, hiding behind Henry’s legs.

“Everything seems normal to me,” Henry said. “What’s wrong about it, Bendy?”

Bendy shuffled his feet a little and sent another nervous glance towards the window, hesitating before he finally spoke.

“It’s so  _ bright _ ,” Bendy said. “Nothing’s that bright ‘cept The End.”

Oh, right. Bendy had never actually seen the world outside of the Studio, and  _ that  _ was endless dark rooms broken up only by the blinding light of the loop resetting. No wonder Bendy had been so nervous.

“Hey, Bendy, I promise it’s okay,” Henry said. “That’s just the sun.”

Bendy shook his head. “The sun was never that bright in the cartoons. Somethin’s gotta be wrong with it.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Ben. We can’t make cartoons any brighter than the projectors,” Henry said. “Just cause we couldn’t make the sun this bright in the cartoons doesn’t mean it’s not supposed to be.”

Bendy looked up at Henry, skeptical.

“Yer sure it’s not The End, right? It’s not gonna just… reset everything, right?” Bendy pleaded.

“If it was, I’d be just as worried as you,” Henry said, rubbing a hand against Bendy’s head. “It just makes everything easier to see, and warms things up, that’s all.”

Bendy didn’t seem all that convinced, if the tight grip he kept on Henry’s pant leg was any indication, but Henry couldn’t expect him to adjust to the world outside the Studio in a single day. For now, he seemed to be trusting Henry’s word, at least, and that was enough. 

“Now, since I’m awake anyway… how about some breakfast?” Henry suggested. 

_ That  _ got Bendy’s attention.

“Breakfast? Like, pancakes and stuff?” Bendy asked.

“Sure, if pancakes are what you want,” Henry said, slowly making his way toward the kitchen. Bendy followed behind him, his excitement starting to overpower his fear. Henry pulled out a step stool so that Bendy would be able to see what Henry was doing, and set about mixing up pancake batter while Bendy eagerly watched his every move. 

By the time the pancakes were done, the sun had finished rising, and shone in through the kitchen windows. Bendy barely seemed to notice. 

One problem solved, then. Probably only a million more to go.


	26. Crying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry gets caught up in regrets, and Bendy helps him through it. Same continuity as Day 25: Sunshine

Henry did his best not to think about the Studio.

That nightmare was behind him now; he was back in the real world, where nothing was trying to kill him, his actions and words were all his own, and time never reset. He should just think about the bright future ahead of him instead of dwelling on the tragedy in the past.

Still, the events of the Studio had been years of his life, even if only a few days had passed for the rest of the world. He’d lived out that awful story so many times that it was burned into him, every beat of the story and every word of the dialogue still clear in his mind. It was impossible for him to just forget it, so despite his best efforts, he kept reliving the nightmare and trying to figure out what he could have done differently.

Sammy—he could have spoken up, reminded the man of who he was, tried to convince him not to go through with the ritual that would wind up killing the prophet instead of the sacrificial lamb. 

Norman—the Projectionist had only been attacked because he was trying to get into the Little Miracle Station Henry was in. He should have been faster getting to the door, tried to put more distance between them, maybe hidden away in a different Miracle Station while the Projectionist didn’t have line of sight.

Boris—if he had just refused to get back into that damn elevator, or been faster getting back to the wolf after Alice kidnapped him, maybe found something that could break down the doors to the haunted house instead of powering the ride on, he could have saved him.

Never mind the puppet strings that had tied his tongue and moved his limbs. He should have fought harder against Joey’s control, broken out of the script sooner…

“Henry?”

The sound of Bendy’s voice snapped Henry back to himself, and he realized he was slumped against the wall in the hallway. His face was wet, but not with ice-cold ink. He raised one hand in a half-hearted attempt to wipe away the tears that had been spilling down his face for who-knew-how-long.

“Hey Bendy,” Henry choked out. He couldn’t manage the usual cheery, reassuring tone that he used when talking to the toon. Not right now, with the ghosts of his friends so vivid in his mind.

Bendy made his way down the hallway towards Henry hesitantly, giving the former animator enough time to shoo him away if he wanted. When Henry didn’t react, the devil sat down on his lap and wrapped his arms around him in a hug.

Henry’s arms rose to return the hug without him even thinking about it. Bendy was warm and soft against him, a far cry from the bony, inky mess that had chased him through the halls of the Studio. Of course, he wasn’t in the Studio anymore; neither of them were. For good or bad, Joey’s story was all in the past now.

Henry sucked in a deep breath, running one hand over the top of Bendy’s head. The devil looked up at him, checking that he was okay. 

“I’ll be fine, Ben,” Henry said. “Just… just started thinking, you know?”

Bendy nodded, his expression darkening. Of course, for all the guilt Henry felt about those who had suffered and died in the Studio,  _ he  _ hadn’t been the one to deal out their fates directly. Even if it wasn’t of his own free will, Bendy  _ had _ .

“I don’t blame you,” Henry said. “Not for any of it. You know that, right?”

Bendy nodded, barely moving his head, and Henry hugged him a little tighter. He’d be a hypocrite to call Bendy out for still feeling guilty right now, but that didn’t mean the toon deserved to feel that way. 

As Bendy shifted around in Henry’s lap, arms still clinging to the man’s sweater, Henry couldn’t help the small smile that crept over his face. He had, at least, managed to save  _ one  _ person from the Studio. 


	27. Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sammy confronts Joey about the ink

“JOEY!”

Joey startled, shoving the papers he was looking at into his desk drawer as the door to his office slammed open. Sammy Lawrence stood in the doorway, his entire body shaking with poorly-concealed rage.

“Whoa! Calm down there, Sammy!” Joey said. 

“I will not  _ ‘calm down’! _ ” Sammy shouted, banging his fist against Joey’s door. Ink splattered out from where Sammy’s hand hit the wood.

“Three times this month!” Sammy continued. “ _ Three times _ we’ve been stuck in the Music Department because a pipe burst and the stairwell got flooded!”

Joey gave a noncommittal noise. “I’m sure that’s frustrating, but are you really getting so worked up over—what, some plumbing? I’ll send Wally to fix the pipe and—”

“He already  _ has _ , or I’d  _ still  _ be stuck down there, like I have been for  _ the past two hours _ ,” Sammy spat out. “And don’t act like it’s just bad plumbing acting up, either!” Sammy strode into the office, holding one hand up in an accusatory point leveled at Joey. Ink dripped off his raised hand and onto Joey’s desk blotter.

“This is all because of  _ your  _ damn Ink Machine!” Sammy yelled. 

“We’re an animation studio, Sammy; of course we need ink,” Joey said, his tone steely.

“We don’t need it  _ piped through the walls of the whole building _ ,” Sammy hissed. “If it was just the Art Department, fine, but it’s  _ not _ . You didn’t build that Machine just for the animators’ convenience, did you?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Joey yelled.

“You created that damn Machine just to make everyone’s work harder!” Sammy yelled. “Whatever excuse you give for it, that’s all it does: it makes noise, and mess, and  _ distractions! _ ”

“Watch your mouth, Lawrence!” Joey yelled, standing up from his desk. Sammy hesitated, but only so far as to bite his tongue and sneer at Joey instead of yelling.

“This is  _ my  _ company! It’s  _ my  _ name on the building and on every cartoon we make, and  _ I’ll _ be the one who decides how to run it!” Joey yelled. “I don’t need some composer who can  _ barely  _ manage a band to be telling me how to run the whole damn Studio!”

Joey’s shoulders heaved in time with his breath as Sammy stared back at him, thinking.

“But you need a composer,” Sammy said. “Your cartoons need music, and you need someone to write it. And that’s me.”

Sammy wasn’t shouting anymore, and Joey took a moment to breathe, trying to calm himself. His mouth twitched into a smile as he forced himself into his pleasant, public-facing persona.

“Of course, Sammy! I’ll worry about the pipes, and you’ll—”

“I’ll quit.”

Joey froze.

“What?”

“If I get trapped in the Music Department because one of your pipes burst  _ one more time _ , I’ll quit,” Sammy said. “I’m  _ done  _ with your excuses, and your babbling about the gods, and  _ all the damn ink! _ ”

“You think you can find another job half as good as this one?” Joey said. “No one’s hiring, and even if they were, once they hear about your temper problems—”

Sammy slammed both his hands onto Joey’s desk, sending Joey’s pen rolling from the force of the impact.

“Then  _ fix the pipes! _ ” Sammy yelled. “It shouldn’t even  _ be _ a problem, Joey! Just  _ take care of it _ , and  _ I _ won’t have to find work elsewhere, and  _ you _ won’t have to find another composer that puts up with your  _ garbage! _ ”

“...I’ll see what I can do,” Joey said, glaring at Sammy. The music director didn’t seem to care, and he stormed out of the room, slamming Joey’s office door shut behind him.


	28. Hollow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joey isn't whistling when Henry enters his apartment  
> Warning: Character death

Joey wasn’t whistling in the kitchen like he usually was.

The radio was still playing, so it wasn’t like the apartment was silent, but it was still  _ different _ . After hundreds of loops, hundreds of visits to Joey’s apartment that all went exactly the same, Henry wasn’t sure what to do when things were different.

Maybe Joey wasn’t home? No, that couldn’t be right, he was always here when Henry arrived. Maybe he just wasn’t close enough to hear the whistling yet.

Henry walked towards the kitchen slowly, each step hesitant. He’d never been attacked in Joey’s apartment before, but if one thing was different this time, who knew what else had changed?

As he got closer to the kitchen, Henry noticed that he couldn’t hear the sound of water sloshing as Joey washed his dishes, either, and he felt a chill go down his spine. It was another small change, but he  _ knew _ how this section of the story went, and this was  _ wrong _ .

Henry tried to walk into the kitchen, but instead of being grabbed by the script and pulled into the room, he found the way blocked by Joey’s wheelchair, which had been pushed out of place.

“That’s not supposed to be here…” Henry muttered. His eyes went wide as he realized he’d just  _ spoken _ . He had _never_ been able to  talk in Joey’s apartment before. Something was definitely going on here.

Henry pushed the wheelchair out of the way, stepping into the kitchen to get a better look at things. It was then that he finally saw Joey. The man wasn’t standing at the window washing dishes like usual. He was sprawled facedown on the floor. Apparently he had been trying to make it to his wheelchair when he collapsed, only managing to push the chair out of the way.

“Joey?” Henry asked, taking a step towards the man. Joey didn’t react as Henry inched closer, didn’t so much as twitch when Henry’s outstretched hand brushed against his shoulder and shook him. His back wasn’t rising and falling with his breathing.

He was dead.

_ No wonder the script broke, _ Henry thought, pulling his hand back from the man’s body. The Studio could sustain itself well enough, but the apartment scene required Joey’s monologue to finish. Without it…

Henry turned to look back at the door he’d supposedly entered the apartment through. He hadn’t even tried it in so long, but now, if the story wasn’t keeping him prisoner, maybe it would open?

He made his way to the door in seconds, and when his hand twisted the knob, the door swung open, just like that. Henry stepped through the doorway and out into the hallway outside like it was any other door.

The hallway of Joey’s apartment building had a stairway at one end, and Henry made his way towards it without stopping to think. He climbed down two flights of stairs and hit the ground floor, then found the front door with very little trouble.

And then he was out. The air stank of stale garbage that hadn’t been collected yet, and the sun was so bright he had to squint, but this was  _ outside!  _ He wasn’t in the Studio or Joey’s apartment for the first time in years. After so much struggle and so much suffering, he was finally free!

And yet… it didn’t feel as good as he’d thought it would. This was all so sudden, and he’d been saved by chance, not his own doing. The image of Joey lying on the kitchen floor entered his mind again, and Henry couldn’t help but feel a smidge of pity for the man. Despite Joey keeping him captive, they had still been friends, once, hadn’t they?

If this was a victory, it was a hollow one. 


	29. Despair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bendy hates The End

The End hurts.

Henry should have realized this by now. He should have noticed the way Bendy screams and cries when The End plays, should have figured out why Bendy always tries to hide the tape from him.

Maybe Joey was right. Maybe Henry just doesn’t care about Bendy.

It would be easier, if he could talk. Just tell Henry how much he hates The End, beg him to stop playing it, but his mouth is frozen into a grin. He shouldn’t miss doing something he’s never been able to do, but that doesn’t stop him desperately wishing for the ability to speak, in the few slow points in the story when he’s actually able to think.

It’s not like Henry tries to talk to Bendy, either. He’s heard the man talk before, but never to him. 

Maybe Joey was right, and Henry thinks Bendy is a lost cause. 

Maybe Joey isn’t letting Henry speak at those times, like he doesn’t let Bendy leave the man be.

Maybe Henry doesn’t like The End either. 

Bendy thinks it probably doesn’t matter if Henry likes The End or not. Joey says it should play, so it does. Really, Joey is the one he ought to tell about not liking it, but he hasn’t seen Joey for ages. Henry may be back now, but Joey was long gone. Maybe Bendy was only supposed to have one Creator or the other at a time. 

It wasn’t worth thinking about, really. Whatever the case, The End always played, and Bendy always hated it. It was just the way things were.

But still, what passed for Bendy’s heart couldn’t help but twist whenever he saw that reel in the projector. 


	30. Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry and Linda see a Bendy cartoon at the theater

Linda had been the one to suggest going to the movies. Despite the far more accommodating hours of his new job, Henry was still used to being forced into working long hours on short notice and was hesitant to make any real plans with what free time he did have. It fell to Linda to remind him that he wasn’t going to be called in on a Saturday because of some looming deadline, and that he could actually enjoy himself in his time off.

It had been months since Henry had gone to the theater. Of all the things he could have done with the scant few hours he had between animating and sleeping, sitting quietly in a dark room full of strangers trying to watch a film had never topped the list. Now that he had time to spare, though, he was actually looking forward to it.

Henry and Linda settled into seats side-by-side in the movie theater just as the lights went down, and Henry turned his attention to the screen. He never paid much attention to the news shorts that played before the film; he read the paper to keep track of that sort of thing. After the news came the cartoon, though.

Linda had picked the movie they were seeing, but she’d also made sure to get tickets that would include the latest Bendy animation. Today’s short was the first that Joey Drew Studios had released since Henry quit. 

As the news reel ended and Bendy’s familiar theme music began to play, Henry gripped Linda’s hand tight. In the months since he quit, he’d been up late more nights than he could count, worrying about what would happen to the company in his absence. Linda’s reassurances that another animator would be able to do the job only went so far when there was no actual way to tell what was going on at the Studio, and this cartoon was his first chance to see how whichever animator Joey had hired would hold up.

The short, Hellfire Fighter, showed Bendy and Boris as firefighters. Henry couldn’t help but laugh as Bendy was flung around by a gushing firehose, and most of the other occupants of the theater were laughing as well. How long had it been since he’d actually been surprised by Bendy’s antics like this? Too long. He’d almost forgotten how  _ funny  _ the little devil was, since he was the one painstakingly drawing every joke and gag.

The short ended, and the opening credits of the actual film started rolling. Henry loosened his grip on Linda’s hand, and she gave him one last reassuring squeeze before turning her attention to the movie. Henry couldn’t help but think over the cartoon, though. 

It wasn’t animated exactly how Henry would have done it, but hey, wasn’t that the point? He didn’t have a say in how they did things anymore, but he also didn’t have to put up with the stress of working there. And it wasn’t  _ bad  _ by any means! It had been funny, and the characters had been on model, and the whole thing fit perfectly in line with the kind of shorts Henry had pitched.

His worries over how the company would hold up without him had clearly been misplaced, just like Linda had said. It was a relief to know that he’d made the right decision. Now he could relax and focus on his life outside of work, knowing that Joey Drew Studios would keep animating Bendy into wacky hijinks just fine without him.

It was everything he could’ve hoped for.


	31. Free Day (Resolve)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was no escape from the story, but there could be an end to it.  
> Warning: character death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it cheating if I've been wanting to write this since chapter 5 came out?

Henry was never going to leave the Studio.

He had tried  _ everything _ , taken every path he was able to take, gotten into every hidden place and uncovered every secret Joey had left for him. None of it had gotten him any closer to actually leaving this place. Joey’s story kept him on too tight a leash to axe his way through doors and walls, so any pathway other than the one scripted for him was impossible to access. Hell, it was possible that the halls he walked were the only parts of the building that  _ actually  _ existed, and the rest of the Studio was nothing more than a rough sketch to give the impression that the place was bigger than it was.

It didn’t really matter if there was more to the Studio than what he’d seen if he wasn’t actually able to reach it, though. The door he saw in the Music Department could have led straight back to Joey’s kitchen, but it didn’t do him any good when he could never actually open it.

He’d kept up hope for a few dozen repetitions of the story. Maybe Joey had left him enough wiggle room somewhere for him to break out. Maybe he’d be able to find his way to a better ending. Maybe, when his old friend saw that this was going nowhere, he’d take pity on Henry and end all this.

No such luck. The story repeated more times than he cared to count, exactly the same each time. There was no exit from the Studio. Henry had come to terms with the fact that he was never going to make it out of here, never going to see Linda again, never going to be free from the script of Joey’s story.

He accepted it, but that didn’t mean he was just going to roll over and take it. One way or another, he wasn’t going to spend eternity in this Studio. If Joey wasn’t willing to let this Studio go, Henry was going to take it from him. 

There was no escape from the story, but there could be an end to it.

Henry had spent the past few loops carefully weighing his options. He would get exactly one chance at this, and if it didn’t work, Joey would rework the Studio to prevent him from ever trying again. Hell, he might do the same even if it went exactly as Henry planned. It wasn’t like he had  _ proof  _ that what he was going to try would put a stop to the loops; all he had was a sneaking suspicion. 

He waits until the story is almost over, after the fight with Sammy and the Lost Ones in their makeshift town. The river of ink laps at the docks, barely audible from Henry’s position inland, but without the bustle of battle he can just hear it. Allison asks Henry to take the lead, and with his body under his own control again, Henry strides forward, not towards the hallway where he knows the board will break under his feet, but towards the tiny room where Sammy had holed himself away. 

A half-dozen candles are lit around the display of inky handprints. Henry picks one of them up, careful to move slowly enough that the flame doesn’t go out. He turns and walks towards the harbor.

“Henry? What are you doing?” Allison asks.

“I just want to check on something before we move on,” Henry tells her. “It won’t take long.”

Allison frowns at this, but doesn’t try to stop him as he walks closer to the docks. He makes a show of holding the candle up and scrutinizing the walls of the buildings—it’s pointless, but it helps keep Allison and Tom’s suspicion down as he crosses the room. He can hear Tom growl as he steps onto the ramp leading down to the river, but Henry doesn’t flinch. He’s faced worse; he can handle a little growling.

“Henry, what exactly are you checking on?” Allison says, beginning to make her way across the room behind him. She sounds worried, but Henry has already reached the gangplank that snapped behind him, as far out into the river as he can go. Even if she runs, she won’t reach him in time. 

“I’m sorry about this,” Henry says, kneeling down. “But it’ll be better in the long run.”

He touches the candle to the surface of the ink. 

The candle flame flickers, and for a split second Henry worries he’s miscalculated, that this ink is water-based, but then the ink catches. In an instant, the river is alight. The flames spread quickly, so quickly, growing stronger until they’re brighter than anything Henry has seen in years. Allison cries out in alarm as smoke begins to rise from the edge of the dock.

Henry stands up and turns to see Allison and Tom fleeing the fire, running deeper into the Studio as the first few embers land on the makeshift buildings of the Lost Ones’ town. The gangplank snaps under Allison’s feet, and the two of them go falling into the administration department. 

That distance from the initial blaze might buy them time, but they won’t be safe down there. Now that the fire has started, nowhere in the Studio is safe. This whole building is made of wood and soaked through with alcohol-based ink. It was practically begging to catch fire, and now that it has, Henry has no doubt that the fire will spread.

If this goes as Henry hopes it will, the whole Studio will burn, and everything in it. Reviving an ink creature or two is child’s play for Joey, but Henry gets the feeling that recreating the whole Studio from scratch will be a strain, if it’s even possible. Burning this place to the ground might be cruel for everyone trapped here, but it’s kinder than letting them live through this nightmare for eternity.

The fire catches the edge of Henry’s pants and burns its way up his leg, following the ink stains soaked into the fabric. The scorching heat is a welcome change from the icy chill of the ink, and Henry doesn’t scream or try to put out the flames as the fire spreads to his shirt and the rest of him starts to burn. 

The feeling of burning up and flaking apart to ash is almost familiar. He can’t help but remember the sensation of The End ripping him apart to build him anew at the beginning of the story. This time, though, there’s no itching pull towards a new destination, no nagging sense that he has more to do. There’s just pain, and when the fire has burnt him enough, numbness.

He actually did it. He found a way to end this once and for all. This isn’t a happy ending, not by a long shot, but he still can’t help but laugh as the room burns around him. Joey went to every length to keep Henry trapped here, to keep  _ all _ of them trapped here, and Henry still found a way to end the story. 

There’s a flash of beautiful glowing fire, a rush of pain, and nothing more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my first time doing a daily prompt event and I had so much fun! Thanks so much to halfusek for hosting this event and coming up with the prompts and everything!


End file.
